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Published on 06/12/1995 All articles from this issue

Volunteers cover Mountain View to help prevent children's diseases

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By Clyde Noel / Town Crier Staff Writer

More than 600 volunteers dressed in white T-shirts and colorful sun caps walked the streets of Mountain View Saturday, June 3, convincing families to immunize their children against dangerous diseases.

"Kids in Common," through a grant from the El Camino Hospital District, created a community-wide outreach program to provide bilingual education in selected Mountain View areas so more infants and pre-school age children become immunized. The education campaign started at 8:15 a.m. with a community leader's breakfast hosted by Silicon Graphics

The Santa Clara County Department of Health, and Kids in Common, identified neighborhoods in Mountain View that were likely to have some of the lowest immunization rates in the county. Seven immunization sites were set-up in schools, where volunteers provided free inoculations by doctors and nurses from El Camino and Kaiser hospitals.

Immunizations were given for protection from diseases parents fear most: polio, meningitis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, measles and mumps.

"These volunteers are all concerned with children," said Judith Kleinberg, executive director of Kids in Common. "When it comes to children's health, zip codes don't mean anything to them. They came from San Jose, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and some as far as Marin County."

Making sure children get their shots on time is the goal the Children's Immunization Partnership of Mountain View wishes to achieve. The rate for on-time immunizations rate in Santa Clara County is 56 percent and in selected neighborhoods in Mountain View under 30 percent. The lack of bilingual education and awareness of how important and safe it is to have children fully immunized by the age of two is largely responsible for this low rate.

The U.S. Department of Health reports for every $1 spent on childhood vaccines, $10 to $14 are saved in future medical care. Santa Clara County had several instances of measles outbreak in 1994 and the Kids in Common outreach program of immunization is the accepted way to preventing outbreaks of disease and cutting health care costs.

At the end of the walking the streets of Mountain View, volunteers returned to Graham School for a fun-filled rally of entertainment, a barbecue lunch prepared by the Mountain View firefighters and a raffle of hundreds of donated prizes.